by Robin Reul
“If he lives here, there has to be someone who knows who he is or at least be able to tell us where we can find him,” Hallie reasons.
The thought occurs to both of us at the same moment. We look up in unison at the dirty, purple wooden sign with gold lettering of the business on the ground floor of Alex’s building. A large crystal ball and stars painted underneath the Chinese words with an English translation that reads LING PO, PSYCHIC, ALL ANSWERS REVEALED.
“All the answers? That’s a tall order. She must be good,” I say.
“It’s worth a shot.”
I imagine there are subspecialties in psychic arts like there are in medicine. Like, you can specialize in talking to the dead versus telling the future or palmistry or tarot or reading tea leaves. I don’t doubt there are real ones, but there are more charlatans who say ambiguous statements that have a high likelihood of being applicable to any situation or person. Stuff like: “I see an elderly gentleman—a fatherly figure—and he seems to be standing on the grass” and the next minute the person is connecting the dots and believing it’s Grandpa from beyond the grave because he used to love golf.
The minute I see Ling Po, I know she’s the real deal. She looks like Edna from The Incredibles with a short, jet-black bob and ginormous glasses that magnify her eyeballs to twice their size. All the better to see the future with. She’s probably somewhere in her late fifties or early sixties. She’s sitting at a table inside an otherwise empty room like she’s been waiting for us to arrive, puffing on a cigarette that she jabs out as we enter.
The walls are painted red, and a thick, crimson-colored velvet curtain hangs floor to ceiling from a rod behind her like a backdrop. White Christmas lights rim the ceiling. There is a painting on one wall of a hand with an eye at the center of the palm, and on the other a giant yin-yang symbol surrounded by dragons. It feels authentic except for Adele playing faintly in the background.
“Come in, come in,” she says, and fans us toward her with her hands. She lights a stick of incense and turns off the music. “I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”
“Hi. Actually, I was looking for someone and was wondering if you might know of him? I think he lives upstairs, so maybe you’ve seen him?”
She blinks her eyes. “Do you have a picture?”
I don’t. Not a recent one. And as far as I can tell, Alex isn’t on social media. I honestly have no idea how much he might have changed physically in nearly two years. “He looks a lot like me, just taller and fuller. Blue eyes. And his hair is longer. Not long-long, but like shaggy long. But then again it might not be now. I haven’t seen him in a while.”
“Hard to find a person if you don’t know what he looks like.” She smiles and reveals a gold tooth.
“Right. I think maybe he lives here in this building—or at least he used to. This is the last address I have for him, so I thought you might have noticed him.”
She narrows her eyes. “You a cop?”
I laugh. “No, I am definitely not a cop.” Amateur detective, crime fighter, and dog kidnapper, yes, but cop—no.
“You want a reading or not? I’m busy. Lots of customers.”
I look around. The place is dead empty, every pun intended. Unless she’s seeing spirits. Maybe I’m underestimating her.
She lights another cigarette and exhales her drag in my direction. I fan it away and explain, “I’m just trying to locate my brother.”
She remains tight-lipped, staring at me as if I haven’t spoken. After a moment she eyes my pocket where my wallet is and then looks back at me. I get it. This conversation is over until I fund it.
“Never mind—we’re sorry to have taken up your time,” Hallie apologizes and tugs at my sleeve.
“Hold on a second,” I tell her and then fish out my wallet and lay a twenty-dollar bill on the table in front of Ling Po. “You’re a psychic, right? You should be able to tell me where he is.”
“Reading thirty-five,” she says firmly, and I extract another twenty.
“Do you have change?”
“No change,” she says as she pockets it. Alrighty then. She comes to life like a pinball machine after a token has been inserted and motions to the two chairs in front of her. “Sit, sit.”
I look at Hallie, and she raises her eyebrows and smiles as she takes a seat. I follow suit.
“Give me your dominant hand,” she instructs and reaches for it. She studies my palm and then runs her fingers lightly over it, tracing the lines.
“I see you on a journey. You come from afar. You’re looking for something.”
So far, I’m not impressed, but then again, I’ve probably only gotten fifty cents worth of my reading. But then she says, “Your heart line is chained. Indicates emotional trauma. You’ve suffered great emotional loss, depression. Someone close to you, yes?”
It’s the sort of thing she has fifty-fifty odds of getting right because who doesn’t have some loss or depression at some point. “Yes.”
She smiles. “This person takes care of you in this life. An adviser of some sort. A man of great importance and influence, not only to you but to many.”
“My father. He died recently.” A lump forms in my throat.
A knowing grin spreads across her face as she nods. “Yes, I sense male energy surrounding you. Helping you on your journey. Even in death you look to this person, want to feel his approval.”
I get a chill down my spine. She could simply be reading the cues from my body language and responses to draw conclusions, but when she adds, “He gives it to you,” it’s as if I can suddenly sense him here in the room. It’s exactly what I need to hear and what I never fully felt from him. Tears fall from my eyes, and I quickly wipe them away with my free hand and apologize.
Ling Po moves her finger to the line below it that curves down across my palm at an angle. “Your head line shows you are a highly creative individual. Crosses in the line show a crucial decision ahead that affects your fate. Fork in the road. You must choose.”
Okay, that’s a little uncanny. I unconsciously shift closer in my seat, trying to decipher how she can extract that meaning from a simple palmar flexion crease. “Is there any indication which road I should take?”
“Each road is the right one. Different outcome. Both have challenges to overcome. Everything in life is an opportunity to learn. Learning is not just in school. Trust your intuition.”
So that’s super helpful.
Her finger moves again across my palm and then rubs back and forth against another line. “I see you have had your heart broken many times. You hold on to people long after they have served their purpose, and this causes you pain. Purpose is not always what it seems. The universe works in mysterious ways. It is all part of necessary life lessons. Sometimes someone is there for a short time, sometimes a long time. No matter. All the same. All necessary.” She points to two small lines on the side of my hand just beneath my pinkie finger. “Only when you let go, love will come. Happiness will come.”
I think I saw that last part once in a fortune cookie. Or maybe it was in my mom’s book.
When I think about it, everyone I’ve ever been close to has broken my heart at some point. I suppose I’ve come to expect it. Perhaps what Hallie said earlier is true—not every person is meant to stay there forever.
She traces a faint line down the center of my right palm. “This is your fate line. See how it breaks? This means external forces heavily influence your life. You find escape in your imagination.”
She puts my hand down and smiles and doesn’t say another word. She’s like a toy that’s run out of batteries. That’s when I realize she’s done and still hasn’t told me anything about where I might find Alex.
“Wow—that’s pretty amazing that you can tell all that from my hand,” I say and shift in my seat. “So…is there anything there more specifically about
my brother? Because I was thinking when you offered the reading that maybe you had some information about him.”
“Please—he’s come a long way, and it’s urgent he finds him,” Hallie interjects impatiently.
Just as I’m thinking it’s possible Ling Po is waiting for me to re-feed her meter before giving me the information I’m looking for, there is the sound of a door opening and the red curtains that rim the room part. A young Asian woman who looks to be in her early to midtwenties enters, holding a tray with a small, clay teapot and a single cup. She looks out of place, dressed in a cropped Pogues T-shirt and a pair of denim shorts, her jet-black hair swept up into a long ponytail.
She nods to us and averts her eyes as she puts the tray down to the side of Ling Po on the table. Ling Po speaks to her in Chinese, and the young woman glances at me and straightens, then responds to her. They go back and forth for a minute, and then ultimately the young woman trains her eyes on me. She gestures gently with her head in the direction of the door from which she came.
“Follow me,” she says.
Chapter 18
Jack
Saturday, June 5, 12:22 p.m.
This holds no higher level of what-the-fuckery than anything else that has happened today, so of course I do. I thank Ling Po and follow the girl through a hidden door to a back stairwell. I feel slightly like Alice following the White Rabbit. That could also be because I’m going on my thirty-second straight hour of being awake, and everything has taken on an almost psychedelic quality. Her ponytail swishes back and forth like a metronome as she climbs the stairs.
“I’m sorry—who are you? And where are we going exactly?” I ask and turn around to check that Hallie is behind me. Safety in numbers. Hallie seems unfazed by the fact that we are following a total stranger up a back staircase without knowing exactly what we can expect to find at the top of it. We could disappear off the face of the earth right now and no one would know where the hell we are. It fits perfectly with the rest of our day.
“I am Mei, Ling Po’s niece. She told me you’re looking for your brother.”
“You know Alex?” I ask her eagerly.
“I knew him. Yes.”
“Knew? As in you don’t anymore? Did something happen to him?” I didn’t expect that. What if I’m too late because he’s finished the job he started back then and I’ll never have the chance to see him or give him Dad’s letter? Mentally, I begin preparations for the worst possible news.
“Come inside and have some tea.”
I’m not big on tea, but I’ll drink it if it means Mei will tell me where my brother is. We reach the second floor, and she opens the stairwell door, which leads us out into a regular hallway, right in front of a scratched, wooden door with a brass 2 hanging precariously from it at an angle.
Unit 2. This is where Alex supposedly lived.
If he isn’t here, then where is he?
She unlocks the door. It’s a smallish one-bedroom apartment decorated like a college dorm room, with tapestries and rock band posters on the walls, milk crates repurposed as bookshelves, a bright-orange couch with a matching overstuffed chair, and a giant TV across from them that takes up half the wall. A small gray cat meows as it sidles up to my leg before moving on to take up residence on top of a small, wooden kitchen table.
“Please—sit down.” Mei motions to the couch as she goes into the tiny galley kitchen. She reemerges holding another teapot and some cups on a tray and places them on the small coffee table in front of us.
“Thank you,” I say, accepting one. Hallie does the same. All this past tense has me confused. “So—this address is the last one I have for my brother. Did he used to live here?”
Mei nods as she pours us each a cup of tea. “He stayed here for a few months. We were friends. We met at Higher Ground.”
“What’s Higher Ground?” I ask. It could be a dispensary for all the name tells me. If it isn’t, it would be a great name for one.
She straightens and looks at me cautiously. “I’m sorry—he’s your brother and you don’t know what Higher Ground is?”
“The thing is—Alex and I haven’t spoken in a long time,” I explain. “I’ve only recently found out where he is.”
“Wow.” She takes that in and nods. “Well, Higher Ground is a transitional housing facility. Alex and I both lived there after we got out of rehab. After that, he stayed here with me for a while. It was only supposed to be long enough to find a job and get on his feet, but it ended up being around seven months. Then it no longer became a feasible situation, and he left.”
If he stayed here around seven months after treatment, it means he would have been living here when Dad died, which would also explain why this was the last address Dad had for him. It would also confirm my growing suspicion that Dad had stayed in touch with him, or at least kept tabs on him.
“So where is he now? Is he still in San Francisco?” Hallie asks.
“The last time we spoke he was, yes.”
“When was that?” I ask.
“I bumped into him downtown about a few months ago.”
“What—one month? Four months?” How am I supposed to find him?
“Do you know where he works?” Hallie asks. “We could go there.”
Mei shakes her head. “I don’t know. He’s had a few different jobs. I think he was a busboy somewhere in Union Square, and then he worked at a dry cleaner in North Beach. Like I said, I haven’t spoken to him in a while. In fact, if you find him, please tell him I say hi and hope he’s doing okay. And please tell him I am too.”
She casts her eyes downward, but not before they betray her sadness at their lack of contact.
“Is there a chance he might not be okay?” I ask.
Mei shrugs. “When you’re a recovering addict, there’s always a chance you might not be okay. It’s a day-to-day kind of thing. As far as I know, he’s clean and committed to his sobriety.”
“Right.” I try to imagine what sobriety must look like on Alex. Mostly when I saw him, he was sleeping, high, coming off a high, or looking for one. I know how much this last year and a half has profoundly changed me, so it’s not a stretch to imagine it would have affected him significantly too.
“I wish I could be of more help. That’s all I know.”
“It’s more than what I had, so thanks,” I tell her.
“Anyhow—he left a few things here, and I’ve been holding on to them in case I got to see him again. I suppose it makes more sense that you should take them. You can give them to him when you see him.”
“Well, seeing him hinges on figuring out where he is,” I say.
“That still puts you at greater odds of seeing him than me.” Mei reaches down to the bottom shelf of her bookcase and extracts a small, cardboard shipping box, the lid flaps straining to break free under a single piece of Scotch tape. She puts it on the table and gives it a slight nudge in my direction.
I reach tentatively for the box and open it. Inside is a deck of erotic playing cards and a harmonica, which sit on top of a vintage Japanese version Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time shirt from 1998 that is identical to the one my dad brought me once from Comic-Con that coincidentally went missing. I knew it. Underneath that is a folded piece of paper jagged at the edges where it was ripped from a spiral notebook. Shoved in the crease of the fold is a robin’s-egg-blue paper bookmark for City Lights Bookstore with the name “Malcolm” written on it in all capital letters.
I unfold the paper and cast my eyes on my brother’s unmistakable chicken-scratch scrawl.
It’s exhausting trying to be happy while simultaneously believing you don’t deserve to be.
News flash! No one is perfect. Distrust most of all anyone who makes you think they have all the answers and knows what they’re doing. Everyone is pretending on some level. Conforming to please. You can’t look to someone else to
tell you how to be happy. That shit comes from within. You are entitled to be anyone you want to be. Just be authentic.
It must have been a journal entry he’d torn out. Or a note he wrote for someone. I might as well have written the words myself for how much I feel them. Perhaps Alex and I are operating on more of the same frequency than I’d thought.
“By the way, I’m sorry about your father,” Mei offers by way of condolences.
“So, Alex knows then?” This confirms what I’d suspected earlier when I discovered the letter, which only makes this more confusing. Obviously, my mother must have told him, but he wasn’t at the funeral. And she kept perpetuating the story even after Dad’s death that she didn’t know how to reach him. Why would she keep lying to me, especially at a time when I might have benefitted from having him to talk to?
“Yes, of course. He was quite shaken by the news.”
Was he? Why didn’t he reach out to me or respond to my texts or emails?
Hallie asks what I don’t have the balls to. “So how come he left?”
Mei’s expression darkens slightly, and her shoulders hunch forward, like a balloon deflating. “At Higher Ground they advise that people who are in recovery should not live together because one can easily trigger the other if they backslide.”
“Did he start using again?” I ask. My stomach bottoms out at the thought. It wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to see why he might backslide if that happened around when Dad died.
“No. I did. And it nearly caused him to.” She gives a tight-lipped smile, clearly ashamed. “Like I said, I’m clean now, but once that happened, he knew that it was no longer a safe space, and he had to go. I can’t blame him.”
I’d automatically assumed Alex would have been the one to screw things up. It sounds as if for once my brother was trying to do the right thing.
“I’m sorry,” I say because this topic seems to make her sad. I pull out the bookmark and turn the printed side to face Mei. “Do you happen to know who Malcolm is?”
Mei shakes her head. “It might be someone he works with. Or maybe someone who works at City Lights?”